Category Archives: Outlaws / Gangsters/ Robbers

A RETIRED London black cab driver was cremated this week – and the key to one of the most enduring mysteries of the last century may have died with him.

Doting grandfather and family man Danny Pembroke was strongly believed to have been the Great Train robber who got away with the 1963 heist.

He may also have been the mystery robber known as Alf Thomas, who police were convinced was responsible for battering train driver Jack Mills.

Scotland Yard said they were “certain” that former British soldier Pembroke was one of the gang who held up a Glasgow to Euston mail train at Sears Crossing, near Cheddington, Bucks, and stole £2.6million in bank notes – worth £50million today.

Likewise, Post Office investigators “strongly suspected” him for the robbery. He was questioned and his home searched, but his involvement could never be proved.

The other robbers were caught through fingerprints and forensic evidence linking them to their hideout, Leatherslade Farm, which had not been burned down as planned.

South Londoner Pembroke – whose real name was Dennis Pembroke – drifted into crime after completing his national service aged 20 and was suspected by police to have been a member of a gang known as the South Coast Raiders.

The gang had already held up several trains on the London to Brighton line when they joined up with a team of professional robbers from South West London to carry out the crime of the century.

Pembroke was a close associate of fellow South Coast Raiders Bob Welch and Tommy Wisbey, whom he lived close to on the Elmington Estate in Camberwell.

Welch and Wisbey – two of the last three surviving known robbers – were both convicted of the train robbery and jailed for 30 years.

Pembroke is thought to have been one of two South Coast Raiders who got away with the robbery. The other has never been identified. One of them was given the pseudonym Alf Thomas and strongly suspected by police of coshing train driver Jack Mills.

Train robbery author Chris Pickard said: “From what the robbers have said themselves, the South Coast team were on the East side of the track and the other lot were on the West.

“Once the train stopped the South West London team moved in. Buster Edwards tried to get in the driver’s cab from the East and Gordon Goody went in from the other side and got Jack Mills in a bear hug.

“One of the South Coast Raiders then supposedly went round the front of the train and came in the same side as Goody and hit Mills over the head with an iron bar.

“The robbers have always refused to say who hit the driver, but there have been suggestions that it was one of those who was never caught.”

One of the most senior officers on the train case, DCI Frank Williams, confirmed after his retirement that police suspected the uncaptured robber known as Alf Thomas of battering Jack Mills, but nothing could be proved against him.

Pembroke’s name surfaced as a suspect soon after the robbery and he was put on an unerringly accurate list of names compiled by Scotland Yard CID commander George Hatherill.

The list was produced from information supplied by criminal informants who were seeking favours and a share of the £10,000 reward.

As well as Pembroke it also included another robber to get away with it, Harry Smith. All the other suspects named on Cdr Hatherill’s list were later convicted.

The only one of the captured robbers not to feature on it was the now notorious Ronnie Biggs.

Three weeks after the robbery, the Yard chief said he was satisfied the criminals named to him were the “certain offenders” and later wrote in his autobiography that the information was “substantially accurate.”

Pembroke’s home was searched on September 6, 1963, by Flying Squad officers DCI Williams and Det Sgt Jack Slipper.

Nothing incriminating was found and Pembroke was interviewed and his prints taken before being released.

He was even asked to provide samples of his pubic hair to compare with those found in sleeping bags left at the farm.

Tests proved negative.

One former underworld associate told The Sun: “Danny got away with it because he was very clever and kept his gloves on the whole time they were at the farm.

“The Old Bill were convinced he was involved, but could not charge him because they didn’t have any forensic evidence to link him.”

Soon after being released by police, Pembroke went to the Devon village of Beaford with Welch and three other men, where they are suspected of hiding stolen cash.

Locals became suspicious about them spending £5 notes in pubs, although the parish church vicar reported his most successful harvest festival contributions ever.

Those close to the robbers claim major bribes were given to police by those who got away with it.

Certainly, Danny did not show any overt signs of great wealth after the robbery — unlike Harry Smith, who bought 28 houses, a hotel and drinking club.

Many of the robbers were also ripped off by other criminals for their money.

Intriguingly, Danny featured as a gang member in a fictional book titled The Men Who Robbed The Great Train Robbers, published last year.

But there could well be another explanation for Pembroke’s apparent lack of wealth.

On 3 December 1963, on the day gang driver Roy James was captured, police received an anonymous call telling them to go to a phone box in Southwark, where they found almost £50,000 of train robbery money.

The money is thought to have been left there in a deal with police by the mystery robber known as Alf Thomas, who was suspected of hitting Jack Mills.

Cdr Hatherill later said the motive for the return of the money found in the phone box was unclear but said it had been done by “one about whom extensive inquiries had been made and who was interrogated at length.”

He added: “In spite of our strong suspicions, nothing could be proved against him and so no charge could be brought.

“My belief is that he thought we knew more about him than we did, and thinking things were getting hot, he decided to get rid of the money to avoid being found in possession with it.”

Another interpretation is that the money was intended as a bribe to Flying Squad detectives, who were prevented from keeping the loot by unforeseen circumstances.

Either way, nothing more was ever heard about “Alf Thomas”.

Following the robbery, Pembroke turned his back on crime and lived in quiet obscurity in Chislehurst, Kent, working hard as a cabbie to bring up his five children.

He died aged 79 from a heart attack in his sleep at home on February 28 and was cremated on Tuesday at Kemnal Park Cemetery.

As well as his children, Pembroke leaves behind ten grandchildren and one great grandson. His son Danny Jnr, 55, said his father had never spoken about the Great Train Robbery.

The gas fitter from Sevenoaks, Kent, added: “My dad was a fiercely private man. He didn’t have a mobile phone or a bank account his entire life.

“He had a razor-sharp mind and right up until the day he died he was the most clued-up man I’ve ever known.

“But more than anything he was a family man. He was the last of a dying breed — unbothered by what other people did and just focused on providing for his family.

“I couldn’t fault him. He was a fantastic bloke and friend and a super, kind and loving dad. He was the best man I ever knew.”

Fate of the big three

THREE men became the most infamous members of the train robber gang. Here is what happened to them . . .

Bruce Reynolds

He was the mastermind of the operation.

After the robbery he hid out in a London safe house for six months then moved to Mexico with his family before settling in Canada.

He secretly returned to England and lived in Torquay where he was arrested.

In 1969 he was sentenced to 25 years and released in 1978. In the 80s he was back in jail on drug charges before being released. He died in his sleep in 2013 aged 81.

Ronnie Biggs

A close pal of Reynolds, Biggs was recruited to hire a train driver to help move the engine after it was stopped.

But the man he found was only familiar with steam trains.

This led to the coshing of driver Jack Mills, who was forced to move the engine.

Police arrested Biggs after finding his fingerprints at the gang’s safe house.

He was given 30 years but escaped from Wandsworth Prison after 15 months by climbing over a wall.

Biggs fled first to Paris, then to Spain, Australia, Panama and finally Brazil.

He returned to Britain in 2001 after being flown back by The Sun and was sent back to jail.

He was released on compassionate grounds eight years later. Biggs died in 2013, aged 84.

Ronald ‘Buster’ Edwards

Edwards was one of several gang members who claimed to have been the one to cosh Jack Mills, but it’s believed he said this for publicity.

After the robbery he fled to Mexico with Reynolds but gave himself up in 1966 after his money ran out.

He was sent to jail before being released early in 1975. He went back to his original job as a florist and opened a stall at Waterloo Station.

Edwards was played by singer Phil Collins in a 1988 film about his life. He battled alcohol and depression and he ended up hanging himself in 1994 at the age of 63.

• The only gang members still thought to be alive are Douglas ‘Gordon’ Goody who lives in Spain but is said to be very ill and Robert Welch, now confined to a wheelchair.

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Jesse James is murdered

One of America’s most famous criminals, Jesse James, is shot to death by fellow gang member Bob Ford, who betrayed James for reward money. For 16 years, Jesse and his brother, Frank, committed robberies and murders throughout the Midwest. Detective magazines and pulp novels glamorized the James gang, turning them into mythical Robin Hoods who were driven to crime by unethical landowners and bankers. In reality, Jesse James was a ruthless killer who stole only for himself.

The teenage James brothers joined up with southern guerrilla leaders when the Civil War broke out. Both participated in massacres of settlers and troops affiliated with the North. After the war was over, the quiet farming lifeof the James brothers’ youthno longer seemed enticing, and the two turned to crime. Jesse’s first bank robbery occurred on February 13, 1866, in Liberty, Missouri.

Over the next couple of years, the James brothers became the suspects in several bank robberies throughout western Missouri. However, locals were sympathetic to ex-southern guerrillas and vouched for the brothers. Throughout the late 1860s and early 1870s, the James gang robbed only a couple banks a year, otherwise keeping a low profile.

In 1873, the James ganggot into the train robbery game. During one such robbery, the gang declined to take any money or valuables from southerners. The train robberies brought out the Pinkerton Detective Agency, employed to bring the James gang to justice. However, the Pinkerton operatives’ botched attempt to kill James left a woman and her child injured and elicited public sympathy for Jesse and Frank James.

The James gang suffered a setback in 1876 when they raided the town of Northfield, Minnesota. The Younger brothers, cousins of the James brothers, were shot and wounded during the brazen midday robbery. After running off in a different direction from Jesse and Frank, the Younger brothers were captured by a large posse and later sentenced to life in prison. Jesse and Frank, the only members of the gang to escape successfully, headed to Tennessee to hide out.

After spending a few quiet years farming, Jesse organized a new gang. Charlie and Robert Ford were on the fringe of the new gang, but they disliked Jesse intensely and decided to kill him for the reward money. On April 3, while Jesse’s mother made breakfast, the new gang met to hear Jesse’s plan for the next robbery. When Jesse turned his back to adjust a picture on the wall, Bob Ford shot him several times in the back.

His tombstone reads, “Jesse W. James, Died April 3, 1882, Aged 34 years, 6 months, 28 days, Murdered by a traitor and a coward whose name is not worthy to appear here.”

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John Wesley Hardin is pardoned

Infamous gunslinger John Wesley Hardin is pardoned after spending 15 years in a Texas prison for murder. Hardin, who was reputed to have shot and killed a man just for snoring, was 41 years old at the time of his release.

Hardin probably killed in excess of 40 people during a six-year stretch beginning in 1868. When he was only 15, Hardin killed an ex-slave in a fight, becoming a wanted fugitive. Two years later, he was arrested for murder in Waco, Texas. Although it was actually one of the few he had not committed, Hardin did not want to run the risk of being convicted and escaped to the town of Abilene.

At that time, Abilene was run by Wild Bill Hickok, who was friendly with Hardin. However, one night Hardin was disturbed by the snoring in an adjacent hotel room and fired two shots through the wall, killing the man. Fearing that not even Wild Bill would stand for such a senseless crime, Hardin moved on again.

On May 26, 1874, Hardin was celebrating his 21st birthday when he got into an altercation with a man who fired the first shot. Hardin fired back and killed the man. A few years later, Hardin was tracked down in Florida and brought to trial. Because it was one of the more defensible shootings on Hardin’s record, he was spared the gallows and given a life sentence. After his pardon, he moved to El Paso and became an attorney. But his past caught up with him, and the following year he was shot in the back as revenge for one of his many murders

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An empty frame stands where Rembrandt’s ‘”The Storm on the Sea of Galilee” once was.

On March 18, 1990, two thieves pulled off history’s biggest art heist by stealing 13 masterpieces worth $500 million from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Twenty-five years later, the case remains unsolved and the pieces still missing. So whodunit?

The buzzer rang at 1:24 a.m. While the last of Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day revelers downed their final drinks before turning in to await their inevitable hangovers, night watchman Richard Abath looked up from his security desk to see two men in police uniforms and caps at the door of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

“Police,” announced one of the men. “We’re here about the disturbance.”

Although trained to first phone Boston police headquarters to confirm officers’ names and badge numbers, the 23-year-old Abath—an aspiring rock musician who had given his notice days earlier—pressed a button to let the pair inside. The uniformed men ordered Abath to summon his fellow guard, 25-year-old Randy Hestand, to the foyer.

“You look familiar,” one of the men told Abath. “I think we have a warrant out for your arrest. Come out from behind the desk and show us some identification.” Making his second protocol breach, Abath left his post and stepped away from the museum’s only panic alarm. The uniformed men suddenly forced the guard against a wall and handcuffed him before doing the same to the arriving Hestand, who was filling in for a sick colleague and working the night shift for the first time.

Johannes Vermeer’s “The Concert”

“This is a robbery, gentlemen,” announced one of the imposters, as if that wasn’t already clear. Using duct tape, the intruders wrapped both guards like mummies, even covering Abath’s shoulder-length curly hair, and led them to the basement where they handcuffed Hestand to a sink and Abath to a workbench 40 yards away.

The thieves then ransacked the museum that philanthropist Isabella Stewart Gardner opened in 1903 as a benevolent gift to the people of Boston. The operation was hardly surgical. The thieves smashed gilded painting frames onto marble floors and sliced canvasses from their wooden backings. The robbers left an empty frame on the office chair of the museum’s security director and removed the recording tape from the closed-circuit television system before departing 81 minutes after their arrival in a dark-colored hatchback that dissolved into the misty night.

The next morning, Abath and Hestand were found, but missing were 13 artworks worth $500 million. The most expensive piece was Johannes Vermeer’s “The Concert,” one of only 36 known paintings by the Dutch master. The robbers absconded with a sketch and two paintings by Rembrandt, including his only known seascape, “Storm on the Sea of Galilee.” Also taken were a Govaert Flinck landscape, Edouard Manet’s “Chez Tortoni,” five watercolors and sketches by Edgar Degas, a finial eagle that sat atop a Napoleonic flag that the thieves could not unscrew from the wall and an ancient Chinese vase. Strangely, the robbers had left untouched the museum’s most valuable painting, Titian’s “The Rape of Europa,” but an unwound coat hanger found near the candy machine suggested that they also pilfered chocolate bars.

An empty frame on the right is where Vermeer’s “The Concert” once was. (Credit: David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

A day after the break-in, the Boston Globe reported that art experts speculated that the treasures “were probably contracted for in advance by a black-market collector outside the country.” Latin American drug cartels, Irish Republican Army militants and even Vatican operatives were floated as suspects. Suspicion also fell on notorious Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, but he was searching for whomever committed the audacious crime on his home “turf” as well so that he could exact a cut. The FBI investigation into Abath, who was the only person tracked by motion sensors in the gallery from which the Manet was swiped, did not yield any answers.

For 25 years, leads continued to prove false, and the case grew cold. “It’s a spectacular mystery—both because of the value of the pieces and the daring of the bad guys,” says Stephen Kurkjian, author of the new book “Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist.” He says, however, that the perpetrators left behind clues that a wealthy collector was not the mastermind. “The brutal way they treated the artwork in stealing it belies that this was a score commissioned by a Dr. No or a Mr. Big who couldn’t live without a Manet, Rembrandt or Vermeer.”

Kurkjian believes the theft was hatched in Boston’s underworld, which in 1990 was being rocked by a turf war between one criminal gang led by Frank Salemme and another led by Vincent Ferrara and J.R. Russo. As Kurkjian reports, the FBI informed the museum nine years before the heist that a Mafia gang was plotting to strike with thieves posing as police officers. According to “Master Thieves,” low-level gangster Louis Royce knew first-hand about the museum’s lax security since he had surreptitiously slept overnight in its galleries as a teenager.

The most likely scenario, according to Kurkjian is that a wheelman for Ferrara carried out the heist. The wheelman, who confessed to the crime according to his boss, had toured the museum several times with notorious art thief Myles Connor Jr. and had been seen with two police uniforms in a bag at a local social club. The motive? To use the pieces as bargaining chips to free Ferrara, who was in jail on racketeering charges. Kurkjian notes that in 1975 Connor received a reduced sentence in exchange for the return of a Rembrandt stolen from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. “Out of that came this wild belief that if you steal a piece of art, you will be able to make a deal for a criminal associate,” he says.

Ferrara’s wheelman was murdered in 1991, and if he was the perpetrator, the location of the artworks may have gone to his grave. “Even inside the gangs, this would not have been a shared secret,” Kurkjian says. “If the gang members who pulled it off were killed—and that is my sense since they were into all sorts of violent activities—no one may know exactly where they hid the stuff except for rumors and innuendos among former gang members and their families.”

On the heist’s anniversary in 2013, the FBI reported “with a high degree of confidence” that it, too, believed a criminal organization was behind the robbery. However, it never publicly named a suspect. The statute of limitations for the robbery ran out in 1995, and federal authorities have said they are willing to offer immunity for possession of stolen property if the pieces are returned. A $5 million reward is still being offered.

Since Gardner’s 1924 death, her museum has been frozen in time, with her will mandating that no artwork could be moved from the precise location where she had placed it. For the last 25 years, the Dutch Room has been untouched as well with four empty frames hanging from the wall, reminders of the personal loss for art lovers, but also hopeful symbols that the paintings will someday return.

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John Dillinger, in full John Herbert Dillinger (born June 28, 1902, or June 22, 1903,Indianapolis, Ind., U.S.—died July 22, 1934, Chicago, Ill.) most famous of all U.S. bank robbers, whose short career of robberies and escapes from June 1933 to July 1934 won media headlines.

Dillinger was born in Indianapolis but spent his adolescence on a farm in nearby Mooresville. He joined the navy in 1923 and he served on the USS Utah but deserted after only a few months. In September 1924, caught in the foiled holdup of a Mooresville grocer, he served much of the next decade (1924–33) in Indiana state prisons. While in prison he learned the craft of bank robbery from tough professionals. Upon parole on May 22, 1933, he turned his knowledge to profit, taking (with one to four confederates) five Indiana and Ohio banks in four months and gaining his first notoriety as a daring, leaping, sharply dressed gunman.

Early Life and FamilyBorn into a middle-class family on June 22, 1903, in Indianapolis, Indiana, Dillinger experienced tragedy at the age of four when his mother died. Shortly thereafter, his father moved the family to a small farm in Mooresville, Indiana; he soon remarried. Dillinger’s father had several children with his new wife, and Dillinger’s upbringing fell mainly to his older sister. Reportedly, Dillinger disliked his stepmother and endured physical punishment from his harsh father. In 1923, Dillinger joined the Navy but grew tired of it quickly, ultimately deserting. He returned to Indiana and told friends and family that he had been discharged. Shortly after his return, he married 17-year-old Beryl Hovius. He was 21 at the time. The marriage lasted a mere two years.

Introduction to CrimeFollowing the end of his marriage, Dillinger moved to Indianapolis and met Ed Singleton, a former convict, while working at a grocery store. Young and impressionable, Dillinger was taken under Singleton’s wing and accompanied him as he committed his first heist: a botched grocery store hold-up. After fighting with the owner during the robbery and knocking him unconscious, Dillinger fled the scene, thinking the owner was dead. Upon hearing Dillinger’s gun go off during the brawl, Singleton panicked and drove away with the getaway car, stranding Dillinger. With no legal guidance, Dillinger pled guilty and received a 10-year prison sentence. Singleton, also arrested, received just 5 years. Dillinger used his time in jail to strategize and plan his revenge against the justice system. With one year taken off his sentence for good behavior, he was released on parole in 1933, four years after the start of the Great Depression.
While in jail, Dillinger learned from seasoned bank robbers, preparing for a future in crime. Within a week of leaving prison he assembled a gang and began executing plans to send arms to his friends at Indiana State Prison for escape. However, on the day of the planned prison break, September 22, 1933, police, on a tip, raided the old house where Dillinger and his newly choreographed gang had set up residence. Dillinger was arrested again. He was immediately transferred to Allen County Jail in Lima, Ohio. The arrest only proved Dillinger’s loyalty to his friends and they were quick to return the favor. Dressed as police officers, Dillinger’s cronies snuck into the jail and broke him out.

Bank RobberiesAll told, Dillinger racked up more than $300,000 throughout his bank-robbing career. Among the banks he robbed were:

June 30, 1934 – Merchants National Bank in South Bend, Indiana – $29,890

The East Chicago robbery on January 15, 1934 is particularly noteworthy. It was at this heist that Dillinger shot a police officer, thereby adding murder to his growing list of charges.

Jail TimeShortly after the East Chicago robbery, a fire broke out in the hotel where Dillinger and his friends were staying in Tucson, Arizona. Tipped off again, police found and arrested Dillinger. Allowing no room for error this round, the police had him carefully secured and sent to Indiana by aircraft, where he could be tried for murder (he was only guilty of theft in Arizona). He arrived at Chicago’s municipal airport on January 23, 1934, where he was greeted by throngs of reporters eager to spread word of the infamous criminal’s capture. At this point in time, Dillinger was already a public sensation, due to the media frenzy surrounding him. Authorities placed Dillinger under high security at the jail in Crown Point, Indiana, and treated him as though he had all due intent to try another escape. However, as things settled down, the armed patrol guards on the streets surrounding the prison were dismissed, and indoor guards became more lax. Despite having six armed guards between his cell and the outside world, the leniency of prison regulations permitted Dillinger to spend hours in his cell carving a fake gun out of an old piece of washboard using just a few razor-blades. A replica of his creation is on display in the museum. Dillinger used this gun to escape by taking one hostage and forcing him “at gunpoint” to lead him out of the prison. Dillinger then managed to hijack a car from a nearby alley, and before the prison knew what had happened, Dillinger was on the road again with two hostages in tow. It was then that Dillinger made the fatal mistake of crossing state borders in a stolen car, bringing his crimes under FBI jurisdiction.

Escape at Little Bohemia Lodge
At the time of Dillinger’s escape, J. Edgar Hoover was working on implementing a more credible, reformed FBI and developing a new strategy of assigning “special agents” to cases. Hoover appointed a special squad, led by Agent Melvin Purvis, specifically to track down John Dillinger. Constantly on the move after his escape, Dillinger drove across the Midwest trying to avoid the FBI. Along the way, Dillinger teamed up with his old girlfriend, Billie Frechette. After several close calls with the cops and losing Frechette, Dillinger set up camp at Little Bohemia Lodge, just outside the remote town of Mercer, Wisconsin, hiding out with a cadre of criminals, including “Babyface” Nelson, Homer Van Meter, and Tommy Carroll. Alerted by concerned residents and the inn’s owners, the FBI swarmed the house, but again, Dillinger managed to slip away. At this point, Dillinger concluded that he had simply become too recognizable. Seeking a better disguise, he decided to undergo major plastic surgery. It was at this time that he was christened with the nickname “Snake Eyes.” The surgery was able to change everything except his devious eyes.

Death
Following Dillinger’s last staged bank robbery in South Bend, Indiana, where he killed another policeman, Hoover made the unprecedented step of placing a $10,000 reward on Dillinger’s head. About a month after the announcement, a friend of Dillinger’s, an illegal immigrant working at a brothel under the stage name Ana Sage, tipped off the police. She was under the impression that the FBI would prevent her from deportation if she helped them. Sage told officials that Dillinger planned to attend a film at the Biograph Theater in Chicago. Armed agents waited outside of the theater waiting for Ana’s signal (a red dress).

“Dillinger gave one hunted look about him, and attempted to run up an alley, where several of my men were waiting. As he ran, he drew an automatic pistol from his pocket, although I have always been told that he carried his weapons in his waist band.”

“As his hand came up with the gun in it, several shots were fired by my men, before he could fire. He dropped, fatally wounded. I had hoped to take him alive, but I was afraid that he would resist to the last.

Hit Three Times.

Dillinger was shot through the back of the neck, the bullet coming out just under the right eye, another bullet crashed through his left breast. The latter would not have killed him, the bullet through the neck being fatal.

A third bullet was found in the left breast, it had passed through the tip of the heart. The breast wounds were two inches apart.”

Betty and Rosella Nelson, sisters and entertainers in Chicago, view the body of the notorious criminal John Dillinger in the morgue.

At the Cook County Morgue, attempts were made to identify Dillinger by his fingerprints, but the ends of his fingers were scarred, apparently having been treated with acid. Purvis had definitely identified him, before the body was taken to the morgue.

Examination at the morgue disclosed a recent wound in Dillinger’s chest about two inches long, which had just healed, and it was believed he had received it in a recent bank robbery raid. Purvis said his last known raid was the robbery of the Peoples Trust and Savings Bank at South Bend.

Dillinger’s hair was died coal black and cut very short. His eyebrows appeared to have been plucked to a fine line. He had a small black mustache.

Hundreds of spectators crowded, pushed and jostled after the bleeding body of the outlaw was removed.

Souvenir hunters madly dipped newspapers in the blood that stained the pavement. Handkerchiefs were whipped out and used to mop up the blood.

John Dillinger wanted poster.

Traffic soon became so jammed that street cars were re-routed, police lines established and traffic blocked out of the area.

Frustrated souvenir hunters hurried to the county morgue, police estimated 2,000 persons rushed to the morgue for a view of the body, and shouted and fought with police to gain entrance. Stringent lines were drawn there also.

Dillinger did not have a chance to get away.

“Every back door both ways down the street was watched,” the Federal chief said.

Two agents were across the street in a restaurant; two were in a garage two doors from the theatre, and two on the sidewalk, in front of the theatre.

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Wild Bill Hickok is murdered

“Wild Bill” Hickok, one of the greatest gunfighters of the American West, is murdered in Deadwood, South Dakota.

Born in Illinois in 1837, James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok first gained notoriety as a gunfighter in 1861 when he coolly shot three men who were trying to kill him. A highly sensationalized account of the gunfight appeared six years later in the popular periodical Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, sparking Hickok’s rise to national fame. Other articles and books followed, and though his prowess was often exaggerated, Hickok did earn his reputation with a string of impressive gunfights.

After accidentally killing his deputy during an 1871 shootout in Abilene, Texas, Hickok never fought another gun battle. For the next several years he lived off his famous reputation, appearing as himself in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show. Occasionally, he worked as guide for wealthy hunters. His renowned eyesight began to fail, and for a time he was reduced to wandering the West trying to make a living as a gambler. Several times he was arrested for vagrancy.

In the spring of 1876, Hickok arrived in the Black Hills mining town of Deadwood, South Dakota. There he became a regular at the poker tables of the No. 10 Saloon, eking out a meager existence as a card player. On this day in 1876, Hickok was playing cards with his back to the saloon door. At 4:15 in the afternoon, a young gunslinger named Jack McCall walked into the saloon, approached Hickok from behind, and shot him in the back of the head. Hickok died immediately. McCall tried to shoot others in the crowd, but amazingly, all of the remaining cartridges in his pistol were duds. McCall was later tried, convicted, and hanged.

Hickok was only 39 years old when he died. The most famous gunfighter in the history of the West died with his Smith & Wesson revolver in his holster, never having seen his murderer. According to legend, Hickok held a pair of black aces and black eights when he died, a combination that has since been known as the Dead Man’s Hand.

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Butch Cassidy is born

Born Robert Leroy Parker, he was the son of Mormon parents who had answered Brigham Young’s call for young couples to help build communities of Latter Day Saints on the Utah frontier. Cassidy was the first of 13 children born to Max and Annie Parker.

When Cassidy was 13 years old, the family moved to a ranch near the small Mormon community of Circleville. He became an admirer of a local ruffian named Mike Cassidy, who taught him how to shoot and gave him a gun and saddle. With Cassidy’s encouragement, the young man apparently began rustling, eventually forcing him to leave home during his mid-teens under a cloud of suspicion.

For several years, he drifted around the West using the name Roy Parker. Finally, on June 24, 1889, he committed his first serious crime, robbing a bank in Telluride, Colorado, for more than $20,000. As a fugitive, he took to calling himself George Cassidy, a nod to his first partner in crime back in Utah. Wishing to lay low, for a time he worked in a Rock Springs, Wyoming, butcher shop, earning the nickname that would complete one of the most famous criminal aliases in history, “Butch” Cassidy.

In 1894, Butch Cassidy was arrested for horse theft in Wyoming. After serving two years in the Wyoming Territorial Prison at Laramie, Cassidy was pardoned. He immediately returned to a life of crime, this time gathering around him a local band of carousing outlaws that became known as the Wild Bunch. Cassidy’s most famous partner was Harry Longbaugh, better known as the “Sundance Kid.” Other members included the quick-to-kill Harvey Logan (“Kid Curry”), Ben Kilpatrick (“Tall Texan”), Harry Tracy, Deaf Charley Hanks, and Tom Ketchum (“BlackJack”).

By 1897, Cassidy was solidly in control of a sophisticated criminal operation that was active in states and territories from South Dakota to New Mexico. The Wild Bunch specialized in holding up railroad express cars, and the gang was sometimes called the Train Robbers’ Syndicate. Between robberies, Cassidy rendezvoused with various lovers around the West and took his gang on unruly vacations to Denver, San Antonio, and Fort Worth.

By the turn of the century, however, the wild days of the West were rapidly fading. Once deserted lands were being tamed and settled, and western states and territories were creating an increasingly effective law-enforcement network. Tired of his robberies, railroad executives hired detectives to catch Cassidy and began placing mounted guards in railcars to pursue the Wild Bunch. In 1901, Cassidy fled the U.S. for Argentina accompanied by his lover, Etta Place, and the Sundance Kid.

The trio homesteaded a ranch at Cholila, though Place returned to the United States after several years. In 1904, Cassidy and Sundance learned that detectives had tracked them to South America. They abandoned the Cholila ranch and resumed a life of robbery in Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia. Though there is no evidence definitely to confirm it, Bolivian troops reportedly killed the partners in the village of San Vicente in 1908. The families of both men insist, however, that the men survived and returned to live into old age in the United States.